


The Journey Home

by EllieL



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Drabble Sequence, F/M, Post-Series, Post-Series Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieL/pseuds/EllieL
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Settling in to life at home, in 10, 100-word drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Journey Home

****  


When Scully told me she’d accepted a position here, I pulled out a map and tried to find it. She let me look for five minutes before jabbing her finger down in a nondescript patch of the southwestern Virginia mountains.

“Here,” she’d said.

It was good as anywhere else we’d been for the last few years. Probably better than most places I’d been in the last decade, though it wouldn’t take much. At least it would be home.

Both of us been without one of those for far, far too long. I can’t remember the last time I had one.

***

Growing up on an island, ten acres seemed enormous. But a drive led to a cozy house nestled against dark woods, mountains looming in the distance. Space to live, to hide, to move. I’d taken that for granted for most of my life.

Here there’s plenty. It seems occupied primarily by me and the wildlife. Unless it had mutated, I’d never payed nature much heed. When things go bump in the night here, it’s usually a rodent trying to escape from the big barn owl who lives over the garage.

There’s a lot to appreciate here beyond Scully’s longer hair.

***

In DC, there was so much light noise that you could hardly see Venus, let alone the stars. Here, there is not a streetlamp for miles.

We lay on a scratchy old wool blanket, legs touching, scanning the night sky for the faint twinkles of the Perseid meteor shower.

Scully has to be at work in an hour, but she drug me from bed with steaming coffee and the promise that the hour before dawn was best for stargazing.

Two white-hot spots flare a few degrees across the heavens, then twinkle out to darkness. She squeezes my hand gently.

***

We moved in late summer, just as the humidity broke. When the leaves changed, we were both in awe. I could see it in Scully’s face; she’s been feeling a lot of awe lately, and I can’t blame her. While I wasn’t initially keen on living here, it’s turned out to be an incredibly peaceful place.

Scully went back to work. I took up gardening. With this much land, why not? Lack of experience is producing some sad vegetable plants, but the dairy farmer next door has offered me some free fertilizer.

How do I explain *that* one to Scully?

***

My education sorely lacked the kinds of things men are generally expected to know, like how to install light fixtures. Unfortunately for me, I’m also bad at following directions.

Scully came home to a lot of unfinished home improvement projects. Fuses in these old houses are too easy to blow.

Fortunately for me, Scully is smart. She sends me off to read while she fixes whatever project I’ve mangled.

The house is starting to look pretty nice. She has yet to figure out I know how to paint. Next week, she’s going to come home to a beautiful master bedroom.

***

Does wanting poultry officially make me a farmer? There are some breeds of chicken out there that look almost extraterrestrial. If my mother could see me now.

Scully said no, though, pointing out that the foxes we’ve got living out back were hunted specifically because they ate English farmers’ poultry.

She just laughed at me when I suggested getting a hound dog to protect them. I wanted to name him Elvis. I don’t think she realized I was serious.

A dog would be a nice addition to the household. Maybe I should have started with the dog. Scully likes dogs.

***

I grew up in New England. I should be used to snow. But we lived on the coast, and snow there wasn’t quite the experience it was inland. The first snowfall here was a picturesque dusting.

Now there are three feet on the ground. Scully’s trapped at the hospital, stranded and providing extra assistance. I’m trapped here, watching it mound up on the window, wondering exactly how treacherous these roads get.

At least my paranoia has left me with a well-stocked pantry. Even if Scully says Ramen doesn’t count as real food. I’m worrying about her and eating soup.

***

For years, it felt like all we discussed was work. Everything had become related to the X-files, in one way or another.

Now we rarely discuss what we had done, or what either of us are working on now. I haven’t asked her to read any of the journal articles, or chapters of the novel I’m writing. She doesn’t mention the bureaucratic headaches of her job, or the kids who don’t make it.

Instead, it turns out things happen in the world unrelated to intergovernmental conspiracies. We do the Sunday New York Times crossword together. She corrects my answers.

***

Even after all our years together, there was a lot I didn’t know about Scully. Things you don’t realize until you live together--really live together, not hide together.

Despite years of medical training, and retraining, she’s terrible with a needle and thread. I have to replace missing buttons myself. She’s a great cook, and enough of a gourmand that she’s disappointed with the local grocery, and delighted by the farmer’s market. Her guilty pleasure is a long, hot bubble bath and a glass of wine.

She puts up with a hell of a lot before I really irk her.

***

When she comes home saying that the FBI wants me to come out of hiding, to actually help with a case, it seems like a badly timed April Fools’ joke. But that’s never been Scully’s style, or the Bureau’s, so I have to consider it.

She wants no part of it, and doesn’t want me helping, either. I want to do it, to stop living like a hunted animal, but I don’t want to do it on my own. But I can’t do it alone, not anymore.  
The disappointed moue as I agree is almost enough to make me reconsider.

****


End file.
